Anthony Brenton, Britain’s ambassador to Russia has officially complaint of psychological harassment by Russian youth group Nashi (The Ours), the Financial Times daily reported on Friday.

The latest act of harassment took place when the diplomat was speaking at the Humanities University in Moscow, the newspaper writes.

Breton was speaking about the challenges to freedom in Russia when a young man thrust himself forward and started to yell at the top of his voice: “Brenton, apologise!”

The ambassador believes it was a part of a well-organized harassment campaign against him, apparently waged with the knowledge of the Kremlin that is a striking symptom of the worsening relationship between Moscow and London.

The organization, which claims to have 7,000 active members has been stalking the British ambassador seven days a week for the past four months, putting him and his family under considerable strain. Nashi wants the ambassador to apology for what it calls “endorsing fascists” in his speech at a conference of political opposition parties in Moscow.

Nashi members follow Brenton with banners at weekends, shout abuse at him, block his car and advertise all his movements on the internet.

“It is a deliberate psychological harassment which is done professionally and which borders on violence,” says Brenton.

The British embassy has officially complained to the Russian foreign ministry, pointing out that Moscow is breaking the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, which demands that foreign envoys be treated with “due respect” and shielded from attacks on their “person, freedom and dignity”.

Nashi said it supported the Kremlin line, met Mr Surkov regularly and received funding from “large, nationally oriented companies”.

There were a number of other cases affecting bilateral ties of the two countries. Political asylum to the renegade oligarch Boris Berezovsky and a Chechen opposition leader Akhmed Zakayev, British diplomats publicly accused of espionage all this has aggravated the situation.

The death of Russian former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko from poisoning in London and following British investigation into this case is likely to strain the relationship further.

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